Story

A little tired of merely building fancy guitars and focusing on just the end product, Swiss Luthier Lukas Brunner felt challenged to invest part of his time and skills, into the lives of the under privileged. For quite some time, Lukas has shared this desire with his long time Indian friend Jonathan Michael (Vancouver/Canada), who is also a guitar enthusiast and a business consultant/coach.
Together then they explored the idea of a guitar production as a social enterprise. In pursuit to see this vision take shape, they travelled to India in January 2014 where Lukas was introduced to ACTS in Bangalore to meet with Santosh Gnanakan and his family. Santosh and Lukas got chatting about woodwork, guitars and changing lives. There was an instant connection and a big dream was born. Let’s build guitars together and build lives at the same time, they said. Thus began the journey of Astha Guitars. Together, Santosh and Lukas are building a team and slowly, step by step, turning that exciting dream into a reality.